Art: March Tie-dye

While I haven't been posting about tie-dye as much this month, we are still certainly creating away! Recently we've been applying the dye directly to the shirts and then putting the ice on top so that we have a bit more control over the dye placement with the design of the folds. It's worked out pretty well so far, though I don't know that we use any less dye in the process... in fact, this might actually use more dye! Previously we would apply the ice first, then sprinkle the dye over the top and you get a very strong visual guide as to when you might want to stop as the dye immediately begins to hydrate and spread. One of the best things about tie-dye, though, is that you can't really do it incorrectly so long as you're having fun. It's such an abstract process that you can take all sorts of creative liberties- feel more traditional and want to do a single-color indigo shibori? Go for it! Want to make a prismatic rainbow alien smoking a joint? If you've got the skills to fold it, you can make it. 

Personally, I tend to stray away from overly intentional designs, like the aforementioned prismatic alien with a joint, because I get too stressed out and anxious in the process. I'm something of a perfectionist and from the point of choosing a particular image and trying to create it to the final unveil, it cranks my anxiety up high...and I don't want that. Tie-dye is supposed to be fun, relaxing, enjoyable craft-time. Doing the ice dyes is soothing, an exercise in patience that's rewarded with colors galore... I'm sure I'll try again and again in the future, to create that particular image I had in mind, but given the nature of the tie-dye it's better (for me, at least) to go in with some flexibility. Even if the design doesn't turn out the exact way I had envisioned or hoped, there's still someone out there who might love it for exactly what it is! Each shirt is unique, after all, just like people, and there's something kind of cool about that, don't you think?

We HAVE started to dabble in techniques for creating images on the shirts separate from the tie-dye, and we might experiment with screen-printing in the not-too-distant future, too. There's always something new to try, after all, and even if you use the exact same colors on the exact same size shirt with the same folds it might not be a perfect carbon copy, so the options are quite truly endless.

More photos below!

Art: January 2018 tie-dye round 2

Malcolm Gladwell once said it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice at any craft before one reaches master level proficiency, and while it's been disputed since it's initial publishing, I think it's a reasonable sort of goal-post for anyone seeking to really master their craft. If that's truly the case, though, we're going to be working at this for awhile yet... Though we started tie-dyeing some time in 2015 I'd estimate each individual shirt or fold design works out to roughly 30 minutes of hands-on-time with all the processing time included. I'd say we've hit around 200, maybe 300 hours? We're younglings in that sense, because there's still so much more experimentation to be done! Even though we've made over 400 items now, there's always so much more we could try, and there's always new colours and folds to experiment with! I suppose that could seem intimidating, and at times it has... when your budget is limited and your aspirations grand, it can be frustrating trying to work within the confines of your available funds- but, that too is in and of itself a great learning experience. We have a bounty of colours available to us right now, an amount I might even consider mildly absurd, but as a lover of colour I really can't complain. Every shirt shows a new aspect to a colour that might not have been revealed otherwise, and I sometimes find myself growing especially fond of a particular shade as my reserves of it dwindle to naught. In all honesty, if I'm happy to own 20-some-odd shades to slather on my lips, I can't at all be disappointed at a collection of textile dyes exceeding that! I'm not at all chagrined at having too-many-colour options beyond the logistical need to find a place for them to reside between dye sessions... and, alas, with our rather limited space for the time being I'm scrambling to find a balance between practicality, utility, and sanity. We're getting there with Antho's help, and once we sort and organise our back-log of new creations we'll have more room to work with. 

But the creative impulse is hard to ignore... so here we are.

Art: Winter ice-dye round two

More ice-dye! What can I say, I love almost everything about this process and it's so much fun! We tend to have a variety of blank t-shirts floating around at any given time so all we really ever need to pick up is the ice so we're prone to spontaneous dye sessions when the mood strikes. This is ideal for us as inspiration can occur at the most random of times and I like to strike while the iron is hot- or, in this case, while the ice is still cold.  This being the desert the ice tends to change states pretty quick during the warmer months, though currently we have a little more wiggle room which is nice. In the process we've been accumulating quite a back catalogue of freshly made shirts that have yet to get properly photographed and listed on our Etsy shop, so for now they're in a bit of a limbo. This has been a little frustrating for me as I'm definitely the hardline type-A in this relationship and feel a need to stay perpetually productive. I always carry two different agendas and a plentitude of pens in various inks and viscosities to work in tangent with the complex color-coded system of tabs I use for my agendas denoting tasks accomplished or goals and events I'm looking forward to or striving towards... I make spreadsheets for fun. One of my biggest goals for 2018 is to dramatically increase our shop inventory and I've felt pressured to get cracking on it before this month slips away into the next. On top of that we've been cycling through various illnesses in various parts of our bodies (chest, stomach, sinus, blah) for most of this year so far... so, really, I suppose there's a very good reason we've been in a bit of a stagnant pause on listing items. I'm grateful that we're still being productive and at least creating, but I've got high-in-the-sky dreams for what I want to accomplish this year and I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself... perhaps 2018 is the year I should breathe deep and try to be a little gentler on myself. These things will get done, and soon, but they'll get accomplished even more gladly when I'm not stressing myself or Antho out about having not already done it. We've still been scouting locations and making new inventory, after all, so it's not like we've simply sat idly by... though, in a sense, that's a lot of what ice dye is- waiting... but I digress.  

Here's some pretty pictures of the process!

Art: Winter Ice-dye session

If you didn't know, Antho and I have a little shop on Etsy where we sell tie-dye. It started out as a simple spur of the moment idea, something to do for fun on a Tuesday night. Our first run was simple but terribly exciting, and we had barely a clue what we were doing but we knew that we certainly had a blast doing it! After that we started dabbling our toes in the multi-colored waters as often as we could and now nearly 4 years into our relationship we've been making tie-dye on a fairly regular basis ever since. I can't say that we know all that much more about what we're doing these days, but we definitely have fun with it and have made well over 300 items thus far! My goal is to triple that in 2018 and that means a lot of folding, lots of ice and lots of dye. I'm so very much okay with that and Antho seems to be on board, too! 

This is great because it's even better to have a partner to help with the process as rinsing out the shirts after letting them soak up the dye can be an arduous (albeit photogenic) process, as no matter how much you rinse it seems like every little movement or squeeze releases yet more dye in what can sometimes feel like a never-ending and futile quest. Eventually you do, thankfully, hit a point where you can unfurl your newest creations and get an idea of what the design will hold- the ultimate reveal is after you've rinsed them out completely and dried them, but after waiting for the dye to cure and spending so much effort in rinsing there's a lot of anticipation built up. It's always exciting to see what new images and designs are revealed along the way, and the entire process is a lot of fun. It's so relaxing to me compared to doing the caricatures and the response has been quite positive! We look forward to making many more unique dye designs in the future and I hope to share as much of that process with you as I reasonably can! It's important to us as the creators and makers behind 710Visuals that people have the chance to see the love and beauty behind the shirts as well as the end results. It's all about enjoying the ride along the way, right?